


We Become Our Needs

by ABookAndACoffee



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, NSFW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 14:33:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10766205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABookAndACoffee/pseuds/ABookAndACoffee
Summary: AU - During ACOTAR, when Feyre is hunting the Suriel and then ends up hunted by the naga, Lucien comes for her instead of Tamlin when she screams."His breath is hot on my face and I wonder if he knows how much I need this, how much I have been craving any sort of closeness. I suspect that he does. If there is anyone else in this empty, sprawling place for whom the hallways echo a bit too much, for whom the silence is deafening, it is him."





	We Become Our Needs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YouLookGoodInLeather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouLookGoodInLeather/gifts).



> This is for my fandom wife and love @squaddreamcourt who sent me this prompt: Lucien x Feyre, and your prompt is the word 'hunted'

The Suriel is telling me about Hybern when they come. 

The creatures make their way through the trees, all dark scales and black talons. The Suriel rasps, “ _Human_.” It is begging me. Asking me to free it before it is caged by the naga. 

A moment passes while they gather. I take stock of my surroundings, the trees, the stream, the Suriel between me and the naga. I calculate every potential move, feeling for my bow, my knife. 

Sound catches in my throat, with the Suriel before me in snares and the naga approaching, hunger in their eyes, the kind that devours and destroys, not the kind that nourishes. 

But then I scream. I don’t have time to gather my breath and I hope it is enough; I hope that Lucien keeps his word and is listening, has not gone too far. 

As I turn to run I trip on a root that is sticking out of the ground and land hard as I fall backwards, my left wrist taking the brunt of the force and twisting painfully. I turn onto my stomach, scrambling, trying to find purchase on the ground, dirt and leaves forcing their way beneath my nails as I grab for anything that will help me pull myself away from them. 

A sudden rush of air brushes my side, blowing my hair in my face and I close my eyes momentarily, knowing what I will find when I open them. A large hand reaches for my arm, grasping it and roughly pulling me to my feet. Lucien merely glances at me before turning to the naga, their movements halted at the sight of the High Fae. 

His shoulders squared, he looks at the one in front. “A bit out of your territory, aren’t you?” 

He glances at me long enough for me to give him a slight nod. As I turn my head towards my target I raise my bow and let an arrow loose, it flying to free the Suriel from its tether while Lucien whirls, blocking two of the naga from reaching me. The others are distracted by the now-fleeing Suriel but turn angrily towards me when they realize they can’t possibly catch it. 

They find me easier prey. They are wrong. Alone, I would have been lost. But I am no longer alone. 

Lucien dispatches the first two naga quickly, moving with a mixture of natural and practiced dexterity. They barely come within an arm’s length of him, striking out with their talons before he ends their lives. 

The third naga heads towards me and I duck; it is running too fast to be able to stop himself from flying over me. I palm my knife and bury it to the hilt in flesh, hear a sickening, familiar sound of tearing skin and feel gore covering my hand, same as when I hunt. 

I stand and we face one another, Lucien taking my hand. I notice a tear in the leather of his pants, revealing his thigh and not a small amount of blood, but I don’t say anything. 

The final naga heads towards us cautiously, the rage on its face tinged with uncertainty. 

A wall of fire appears between us and the final naga before curling around to envelope the creature. 

“Are you alright?” Lucien asks, when its screams have died down. The stench is horrible and I wonder if I’ll be able to forget it. I nod and he moves his hand from mine to wrap his arm around my waist. 

Lucien winnows us to the house, to my room. My breath is already struggling and I collapse to the floor coughing, my chest heaving with the effort of escape and then fight. 

Strolling to the bathroom, Lucien soon returns with a bowl full of warm water and a rag. I pull myself up onto the bench at the foot of my bed, ashamed at the contrast between us. I’m practically crawling on the floor while he barely looks like he went outside, were it not for the wound on his leg. I take in a sharp breath and bite my tongue to keep from crying out when I put pressure on my wrist, forgetting already that I fell when I was out there, alone. 

Lucien gestures for me to stay there and stands in front of me, laying the bowl on the bench next to me. Brushing my hair away from my neck, he begins to clean the dirt and debris from me, taking care to be gentle when the cloth comes into contact with patches of skin that have been scrapped raw. 

We sit like that in silence and I try to find a place to rest my eyes. He nearly takes up my field of vision and there is a smell, something of the woods that has come in with him. I realize that it hasn’t come in with him, but that it’s coming from him, and it is the scent of the place I spent most of my time before, when I wasn’t in our cottage. 

“Thank you for coming,” I whisper. I look down at my wrist, cradling it in the palm of my other hand. 

“Tamlin would have been upset, if I hadn’t gone for you,” he answers. 

“Of course. It was for Tamlin.” I try to hide the disappointment in my voice but I feel like it is coming off me in waves. The idea that he might have somehow become my friend these last weeks is apparently too much to ask. 

“Feyre,” he begins. He looks up, past my head at something - or nothing - on the wall behind me. “There is a lot going on here. We are trying to deal with-” 

“The blight, I know,” I interrupt. I don’t need his pity. I hadn’t come here expecting to find anything like kindness, and I bite back my bitterness. 

“Did you find out what you wanted?” 

I think back for a moment, to what the Suriel had told me about Hybern. I shake my head. “Not enough,” I say shortly. 

I start slightly when he places a hand on the top of my head, leaving it there a moment. “I wouldn’t leave you out there. You should know that,” he says. I wonder what he is leaving unsaid, what he won’t tell me. 

He leaves his hand on my head, sliding his fingers through my hair. I lean into the touch - it has been weeks, longer, since I’ve had anything resembling affection. With Isaac it wasn’t loving, exactly, but he was kind. It was something. And now, at night, I still feel for my sisters, the space of my new bed threatening to swallow me. 

When Lucien shifts slightly closer to me, I place my hands behind his knees, holding him in place before me. I hear him swallow. 

“Lucien,” I begin. He looks down at me, silent. “Do you miss your family?” I think of Nesta’s glares, the cruel curl of her lip, Elain’s sweet smiles in the face of our debilitating poverty, my father’s cane. I’ve never heard him talk about where he is from, about anyone he cares about apart from Tamlin. He seems dedicated to this court, but somehow removed, separate. Surely the High Fae would want to claim someone with so much power, someone who has the strength to resist this blight. 

He shifts his feet until he is between my legs. He places a finger beneath my jaw, though I am already looking up at him. “This place is all I need.” 

I recognize the hollowing echo in his words, the futility in trying to find time for something other than survival. My fingers trace a light pattern on the backs on his knees. He continues running the warm cloth over my skin, holding my injured wrist to wipe away the grime that coats the arm. With delicacy he cleans my hands, wiping away what I had brought with me from the forest floor. 

Every point of contact makes my nerves scream for the want of intimacy and reassurance. 

There was resignation in his voice that betrayed his loneliness, and I decide to take a chance. I grab the fabric of his shirt and pull him to me, pressing our lips together roughly. He lets me, and his tongue is in my mouth in an instant. 

His hands go to the collar of my shirt, pushing it aside, searching for skin. I lean back and brace myself, my hand hitting the bowl. It clatters to the ground with more force than I expected and I jump. Lucien, though, keeps going as if nothing happened, pulling my shirt off over my head. His lips find my neck, my collarbone showing itself less than it had when I came here. His tongue traces the line of it and I groan with satisfaction, already content with this small bit of contact. I wrap my arm around him, resting my cheek against the top of his head while he takes in what skin he can with his mouth. 

Lucien wraps an arm around my waist and lifts me up slightly, the uncomfortable arch of my back merely a sign that our bodies are trying to connect and I don’t care that it aches, that I have hardly any more control over myself right now than when I had fallen earlier. The momentum of this moment has us heading for a path both of us need more than we knew. 

When I try to pull myself back onto the bed he takes over, grabbing underneath my arms to lift me and settle me in the center of the mess of bedding I hadn’t bothered to arrange this morning. My pants slide down my narrow hips and he puts his hand down the front of them, dipping a finger into me. I grab his hair, pulling him back. 

“Not yet,” I say, and push him on his back. To my surprise, he obeys. He takes his hand out of my pants and lies back, grabbing for me, not content to wait and let me come to him. I let my weight fall forward over him and he yanks on my braid until I am pressed completely against him. 

I’m resting on his broad chest and I let my hands travel downwards, feeling the taper of his hips. Lucien has been formed from centuries of training and he feels solid beneath me. There are fewer things in the world that I want more right now than to keep touching him, to take comfort in him. 

Pushing my palms down, I slide his pants over his hips, throwing them to the side with his help. My hand brushes the wound on his thigh and he flinches slightly. He grabs my wrist and pulls me away from it, but it has healed noticeably from when we were in the woods. I don’t ask him about it. 

I move to take my own pants off before returning my body over his. 

His breath is hot on my face and I wonder if he knows how much I need this, how much I have been craving any sort of closeness. I suspect that he does. If there is anyone else in this empty, sprawling place for whom the hallways echo a bit too much, for whom the silence is deafening, it is him. 

Lucien is hard against my stomach and when I reach down to grasp him I feel a small bead of moisture and spread it over his tip with my thumb. He reaches beneath my arms again to pull me up, my breasts hanging and aching over him. He takes one into his mouth, biting down on a nipple and I have to brace myself above him, my arms on either side of his head and my hips now rutting against his stomach, searching for the length I had felt before, trying to inch myself lower until I can feel him slide into me. 

He finally releases me, letting me slide down over his body. I let my legs fall to either side of his, grinding my hips into him once before I push myself up, careful to place my weight on my uninjured wrist. Sliding the fabric of his shirt up inch by inch, I trace lines of scar and muscle. His hips lift up to meet me and I smile. 

There is only a moment of hesitation before I take his cock into my hand and position my cunt over him; it only takes a moment for him to thrust his hips up into me, making the connection complete. 

It has been weeks, longer, since I was with Isaac, and now all I can think about is how different Lucien is, that there might be something there I never could have had with that boy from the village. I’m not sure how yet, but we are tied to this place in a way that neither of us wants. I know little of his background, what he is really doing here for Tamlin, but there are moments when I can sense him hesitate, holding his tongue. For all the times he tells Tamlin what he thinks, there are moments when I feel as if I can see something more, something he refuses to say. 

But I don’t care. I need to get out of here, to find my family, and Lucien and I are sharing a moment. Providing one another with something I still can’t name. 

My hips are rocking on him, moving up and down in a slow rhythm at first. I don’t want this to end, for him to leave, too quickly. I’m not just looking for release right now. There is something to be said for thinking only about this moment, for ignoring what might happen if Tamlin came home, or if I found out that I could leave tomorrow. Among the quiet sounds of the empty house there is only our breath, the sound of skin on skin, and the sweat that mingles between us. 

Lucien grabs my waist and turns me on my back, remaining inside of me and taking charge of the pace at which our bodies move. Isaac, in that barn, he had been fulfilling a need, but Lucien’s need goes so much deeper. He puts everything he has into this, not love or romance but desperation, the urgency with which our bodies connect coming from some deep wounds I know nothing of. His hips press my legs wider and he grabs one knee, pulling it up to hook over his shoulder. I can’t help moaning and arching my back into him. His head falls to my shoulder and I close my eyes, wanting only to feel what my nerves can tell me, and to ignore all the rest of it. 

A pressure is building in my core, the sensitive area between my legs crying out for more and he gives it to me, reaching down to stroke my clit as his hips thrust into mine, over and over. I grab a handful of his hair and pull his head up so that he has to look at me. I realize that I need to see him, to look into his face while he fucks me. He searches my face with his good eye, understanding. 

When I feel the beginnings of my orgasm I finally cry out, not caring if anyone might come in and find us. I move my hips against his rhythm to coax the rest of it out, making sure I am able to get as much pleasure as I can. Lucien, sensing my plan, changes his own pace to match mine. When he comes inside of me, I run my hands down his side, grasping his hips and pulling him up towards me, feeling the fit of him between my legs. 

Both of us finished, he falls to the side, the only place we are now connected being the arms we have outstretched to one another. There will be no tenderness, no soft kisses. This was not a moment for that, and we both know it. The comfort we have found in each other is made of something else, and eventually I will think about what it implies. 

When he leaves the room, the door clicks shut. I don’t know how he got here, or if I’ll ever be able to leave, but I know that for a while, we’ll be able to cling to each other in this dark.


End file.
